Re: Long time no see... (still OT) Message #10 Posted by Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil) on 17 Dec 2006, 6:08 p.m., in response to message #9 by Walter B
Alo Walter; bom dia!
I'm 'in deep' fond of languages, and local expressions are the ones that 'catch' me, mostly when not usual in our 'knowledge base'. Thanks for adding this one!
I'll be attending French, German and Latin classes this year (yeap. Latin!). French and German are actually a sequence, mostly because I stopped studying these languages for too long, and Latin will be the first time. I also began studying Dutch in the beginning of 2006, but I see that German knowledge will help a lot, so I decided to conclude German prior to go ahead with Dutch for now.
In time: as you used a very common sentence in Portuguese, let me just add a tip. The very corresponding English sentence for 'Bom dia o senhor Luiz' would be 'Good morning the mister Luiz'. The article 'o' (correspoding to 'the' when the gender of the noum is male) may be suppressed in this case; hence "Bom dia senhor Luiz" would be an improved sentence.
About Chinese: some years ago, I was told that Chinese languages would take place as strong languages, mainly Mandarin and a second language (in Portuguese, it is named 'Cantonês'; don't know its name in English, just guess). But when I knew it's needed about 20.000 Kanji for basic conversation (about 45.000 exist, right?), I actually felt I should keep learning the ones based in our 26-symbol based alphabeth. In Japan they use two syllable sets and some Kanji (about 1,000 basic, 5,0000 tops, IIRC), but in China they use so too many symbols... Writing in Romanji (I guess 'Romanji' applies in this case, too...) makes it easier, at least for me, to imagine the phonemas. In any case, I did not actually loose the interest on learning other languages, Chinese ones in the list. Knowing facts about them 'tease' the mind... In time: is it true that there is no third-person in Japanese (he/she/it)?
Thanks again.
Luiz (Brazil)
Edited: 17 Dec 2006, 8:42 p.m.
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